


big god

by silentsaint



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Cuddling, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Advent Children (Compilation of FFVII), Post-Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Songfic, abrupt tonal disparity, yearning but fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25698457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsaint/pseuds/silentsaint
Summary: you'll always be my favorite ghost.
Relationships: Sephiroth & Cloud Strife, Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Comments: 5
Kudos: 92





	big god

_You need a big god_

_Big enough to hold your love_

_You need a big god_

_Big enough to fill you up_

Pressure.

Something tightens around Cloud’s neck, compressing his throat and leaving the taste of oxygen as nothing but a sweet and faint memory. Leather, both smooth and rough against his skin, simultaneously burning hot and chilling ice.

There is nothing there. _There is everything._ No one is behind him. He is never alone.

Thoughts filter hazily through, both in his own voice and another’s, familiar but without name. A rush of anger, of hatred, of a deep seated longing for something named only as vengeance.

_Finish me off, so I don’t have to dream about you anymore._

Cloud struggles for breath, and a thought whirls through as to why it’s still so important to keep fighting it.

When he jolts awake, the morning sun shining fecklessly down, he’s gasping for breath, the sheets around him curling around his neck. He must’ve been restless in his sleep, tossing and turning enough to have them coil around him. 

When he first glances at himself in the bathroom mirror, there are pale pink indentations at the front of his throat, faint bruises in the shape of flower petals. Ten of them, ringed in the right pattern as to clearly be-

When he blinks, they’re gone.

_You keep me up at night_

_To my messages, you do not reply_

_You know I still like you the most_

_The best of the best and the worst of the worst_

_Well, you can never know_

_The places that I go_

_I still like you the most_

_You'll always be my favorite ghost_

A man comes into the bar that day, with grey hair that hangs almost to his shoulders. His shoulders are broad, and he’s tall enough that he has to duck slightly under the doorframe. 

When he turns so that Cloud can see his face properly, he is elderly, most likely a former construction worker, or even a farmer, judging from his weathered skin and roughened hands. He laughs with his companions at the table, face creasing into deep and well worn smile-lines. When Tifa comes to take their orders, he exchanges pleasantries with her with all the zest of an old friend.

Cloud turns away and back to the glasses in the sink, and wonders why he can hear his heart pounding up into the back of his throat. 

_It’s nothing. You’ve just had...weird experiences with people with long grey hair._

For but a moment, his mind unhelpfully supplies an image of a different man, seated at one of Seventh Heaven’s tables, silver hair spilling around his shoulders and down the back of his chair. He’s smiling, softly, faintly, his eyes fixed on some blurry figure seated to his right. 

He looks...happy.

With a sharp inhale, Cloud blinks, and realizes he’s been forgetting to breathe. The glasses in his hands clink in protest at how carelessly he’s been handling them, and he swallows hard as he returns to his task.

 _I wonder..._ He _must’ve known how to laugh, at some point. Before...everything._

But it’s hardly worth thinking about it now, is it.

_You need a big god_

_Big enough to hold your love_

_You need a big god_

_Big enough to fill you up_

His dreams that night are of a different variety. Instead of gloved hands clenched around his neck, bare hands are circled around his body, a warm arm around his shoulders, and another curled under his knees.

There is the quiet sound of water moving, and the dappled light of the sun being filtered through a myriad of trees. His skin is bare, dripping with water that is neither too hot or too cold, and pressed warmly against someone solid. Someone cradling him, as if he is a precious burden.

Any attempt to squint into the brightness of day is foiled by the haze covering his vision. He can see the clear azure of the water sparkling in sunlight, the swaying emerald of the trees above them, even the pale blue early afternoon of the sky high above.

But as hard as he tries, he can’t quite see the face so near to his own.

Cloud’s face is pressed into the figure’s neck, and the sensation of wet skin against his forehead is so oddly real it’s enough to laugh at. The hand around his legs shifts in place slightly, and the fingers cradling his knee are long and slender.

“Who,” he manages, unable to raise his voice above that of a whisper, “are you?”

The sunlight is warm upon them, even competing with the cool of the water. The light grows brighter as they move forward, either swept along by the current or borne forward by some powerful stride.

There is no response to Cloud’s query, other than the whistle of the wind, and what sounds like the faint chiming of bells. As if from far away, there is the sound of a young woman laughing, airy and carefree. 

When the hands suddenly falter, and Cloud feels the hazy warmth slip away and the water creeps up to claim him, it’s difficult to feel much surprise. There is no resolution, no answer as to whose hands would carry him bridal style with such care.

Wakefulness whips forward to meet him, and he writes off the dampness of his hair as being the sweat of summer.

_Sometimes I think it's gettin' better_

_And then it gets much worse_

_Is it just part of the process?_

_Well, Jesus Christ, it hurts_

_Though I know I should know better_

_Well, I can make this work_

_Is it just part of the process?_

_Well, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, it hurts_

_Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, it hurts_

_Is that…_

Hands scratch at the sides of his bodies, or at least the facsimile of hands. Grasping, tearing, offering up. Supplication made manifest in gruesome offering.

He’s being pulled apart at the seams, literally, by some acid component or the horrid cloying feel of a thousand sharp teeth ripping into his skin and sinew, lifting away flesh until the spirit has nothing left to hide within.

When Cloud tears his hands away, lifting them to his face, they are covered with the black offal of the stigma, running together with the runny red of humanity and the sickly green of mako. His skin _burns._

_“There is nothing to fear, Cloud. You will be stronger for it.”_

He reaches out in anger, grasping upwards at the formless echoing voice. There’s nothing to touch, of course, but even raking his nails against the emptiness feels like a shout of defiance. 

“You don’t get to decide that,” he hisses into the ether. “You’ve taken enough from me.”

The voice presses against his ear, a flush of warmth and _being._ _“Puppets don’t handle their own strings.”_

The growl that tears it’s way out of his throat is practically animalistic. “Fuck you.” Reddened and raw hands reach outwards, seeking, hunting, and sink into the gossamer threads of some ghostly presence beside him.

 _It’s weird,_ Cloud thinks to himself, as the ~~dance~~ fight continues, and his teeth sink into the flesh of something that’s not quite there, teeth dripping red. _I’ve...never felt so satisfied._

_I’ve never felt so whole as when I was being ripped apart._

_You need a big god_

_Big enough to hold your love_

_You need a big god_

_Big enough to fill you up_

_“Please.”_

The flames light up the room like a hearth, a thousand flickering candles that glow so brightly their shape ceases to be distinguishable. A sea of flame spreads outwards from where he sits, slumped forward on his knees like he’s bent down in supplication.

“What is it that you’re begging for?”

The voice rises from the ground, as if he’s speaking to the very spirit of this darkened place. It resounds around him, till there is no corner that is not full with either the voice’s echoes or his own stilted breathing.

“...peace.” His breathing comes in shallow huffs, the scent of smoke filling up his nose and throat. “Freedom from...all of this.”

Arms weave around his back, pulling him back into the coiled embrace of a snake. “Freedom is an impossibility. Liberation, however…”

An exhale fans across the back of his neck, cool in comparison to the smoke and heat of the room. “Liberation can be found through _acceptance.”_

“I don’t-”

“You will never be rid of me, Cloud, just as I will never be rid of you.”

The stygian altar that rises before him, engulfed in a sea of flame, flickers in his vision. Against his better judgement, his muscles that have laid coiled tight now release, head tilting back against the shoulder of the devil.

“And have you accepted it?” He closes his eyes against the red haze of fire, breathing in the smoke that now seems to have somehow stained him irrevocably. 

_“What do you think, Cloud?”_

He sighs, and it feels as though the arms tighten around him.

“I think we both want to be at peace.”

_Shower your affection, let it rain on me_

_And pull down the mountain, drag your cities to the sea_

_Shower your affection, let it rain on me_

_Don't leave me on this white cliff_

_Let it slide down to the, slide down to the sea_

_Slide down to the, slide down to the sea_

The fire and smoke of the dream suddenly feel very far away, as Cloud feels his eyelids flicker, the sun coming through the blinds in overly warm radiance. It’s going to be a hot day, but not unbearably so. It’s good news, as it will make the ride back to Edge from Kalm a little more enjoyable.

“Good morning.”

The words cause a gentle vibration across the side of his face, and Cloud goes from half-asleep to painfully awake in the span of about a second and a half. The awareness floods across him that his face is not, in fact, smushed into a pillow, but instead a very warm and solid pair of collarbones. 

The most distressing part is that it’s comfortable enough that he has to fight with himself to pull away. There’s already no doubt about who the collarbones belong to, but the extra moment of denial doesn’t taste as sweet as he thought it might.

When he pushes himself up to his elbows, jaded eyes are there to meet his as he raises his gaze. They are half lidded and lazy, not unlike those of a drowsy cat.

“...Sephiroth.”

What’s perhaps most alarming, once he’s aware enough to consider it, is the lack of surprise coursing through him. It feels like the most natural thing in the world, to wake up intertwined in such a way. Sephiroth’s arm is still draped across his waist, and he makes no move to push it away.

“It’s still early.” Now that Cloud’s paying attention, it hits him all at once how quiet and rough Sephiroth’s voice is, how tiredness is draped across the man like a blanket in and of itself. “You should rest more.” 

He looks almost _human,_ with his hair undone and laying across the bed every which way, pieces and strands tangled up and sleep mussed. The most damning thing of all is he looks almost sane, staring sleepily up at Cloud’s face like this isn’t perhaps the weirdest set of circumstances they’ve been in yet.

“It’s already seven.” Cloud says, more to fill the silence than anything else. It’s a valid point though, he’s due back in Edge this afternoon, and it’d be better to start the journey early. 

“It’s _only_ seven. Now come here.” The sheer dumbfoundedness of Sephiroth being a _cuddler_ leaves him too boneless to do anything but flop gracelessly back down when the other man tugs on him.

Cloud’s brain just about shuts down then and there as three hundred pounds of muscle and unholy alien matter curls around him, resting his face on Cloud’s spikes. A soft exhale ruffles his bangs, and the only thing that he can think of in the moment is a gentle stream of _what the fuck, what the fuck, what the f-_

“Where the hell did you get a body?” It’s not the question he meant to ask, and if either of his hands were free from where they’re trapped against Sephiroth’s chest, he would’ve smacked himself in the forehead.

Sephiroth makes a faint grumbling noise into Cloud’s hair, as if bothering him with such semantics is a sin. “...I asked nicely.”

To be surrounded with such warmth and the weight of heavy limbs around him is distracting enough that Cloud feels the edges of his awareness begin to slip out of his grip ever so slightly. “S’not an answer.”

“Mmghn.” With that intelligent response, the arms cradling him go slightly lax. It seems the would-be-god has fallen almost immediately back to sleep.

Pressed directly up against his chest, it’s like Sephiroth’s heartbeat is flowing through the both of them, entwined in more ways than simple skin on skin. Cloud allows his eyes to flutter shut, and tries not to inhale too much of Sephiroth’s hair.

_Liberation, huh._

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/SEFIKURAS) || [tumblr](https://sephirothcrescent.tumblr.com/)


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